Many arrow rests are known to support an arrow prior to and after release. The most basic rest is a flat or angular surface. Rests attempt to minimize the amount of friction with the arrow to prevent damage to the arrow shaft or fletching (feathers) and to increase the reliability of each shot. Minimizing the restraint of the arrow, however, can result in the arrow slipping from the rest when the bow is tilted or rotated radially or when drawing an arrow, which is often the case during hunting.
Some rests attempt to provide radial support to the arrow shaft to prevent the arrow from slipping when tilting or rotating the bow. Most of these devices, however, impart severe frictional resistance to the passage of the arrow unless the fletching is oriented rather precisely to the radial openings in the arrow rest. Other devices, such as that described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,896,849, assigned to the assignee of the present invention, address such problems. Yet, even such reduced frictional resistance may be sufficient to cause some arrows—for example, expanding broad heads, which expand when striking a target—to expand while being loaded into the arrow rest. Thus, loading expanding broad head arrows into these devices requires caution, which likely requires additional time and care to load.
Furthermore, in some devices, proximity of an arrow head to the bow string when loading an arrow can result in damage to the bow string. Thus, loading an arrow into such a rest requires caution, which, again, likely requires additional time to load.
Ring-type arrow rests having a radially disposed slot that permit an arrow to be side-loaded are known. Because a segment of the support ring is removed to form the slot, these devices lack the strength and flexural stability of a continuous support ring. The lack of dimensional stability of the rest that results from this reduced strength and flexural stability may reduce the accuracy and reliability of each shot.